On Friday, during an appearance in Virginia, Obama made the point that success in business comes not just from individual drive, but also from benefits provided by others, including the government:

OBAMA: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Then on Monday, Fox & Friendsdeceptively edited Obama's remarks, tearing two sentences of his argument out of context and distorting them to make it appear that he was saying small business owners don't deserve any credit for their own success. Mitt Romney, during a campaign stop today, repeated Fox's distortion of Obama's remarks, and his campaign posted a video on YouTube repeating the out-of-context remarks over and over.

Now, Erickson has brought this distortion to CNN. During an appearance on The Situation Room Tuesday, Erickson said:

ERICKSON: For [Obama] to say somehow that if you've built something, you didn't really build it, other people do -- no one denies that other people contributed to your success in life, but, I mean -- this is just grade school Marxism that he's uttering.

Erickson went on to label the distorted comments from Obama as Marxist twice more during the segment. But Erickson is leaving out the key context of Obama's comments. Obama's "[y]ou didn't build that" comment was directed at American infrastructure and services such as roads and bridges - not an individual's business.

On December 7, President-elect Donald Trump named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Media should take note of Pruitt’s climate science denial, his deep ties to the energy industries he will be charged with regulating, and his long record of opposition to EPA efforts to reduce air and water pollution and combat climate change.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked -- or considered -- nearly a dozen people who have worked in right-wing media, including talk radio, right-wing news sites, Fox News, and conservative newspapers, to fill his administration. And Trump himself made weekly guest appearances on Fox for a number of years while his vice president used to host a conservative talk radio show.